Pa looked on while Bill dug and planted and watered. He waited for the sure-thing failure of that garden.
‘You were a bloody fool to think anything was going to grow there,’ Pa snorted one night, gesturing to the dying plants. He spat in the dirt. ‘You’ve gone soft, boy. This is the Mallee, not some namby-pamby city place.’ Pa turned to Elise. ‘Grow some geraniums in tins and show a bit of bloody common sense.’
Still, Elise didn’t surrender easily. And when she did yield, it was with a peculiar dignity, telegraphing an inscrutable message to Pa and to the Mallee. She watched the garden wither until it was dead and dry then got down on her hands and knees and scrutinised the soil to make sure it was utterly devoid of moisture. She tipped water on it and watched to see the dirt surge up and reject the water until the water had no option but to bunch up into dirty little pearly balls and run away.
She refused to grow anything then. Instead, she kept a garden of hot dry red dirt. She raked the dirt. She swept the paths with the dust broom. But no living things and especially no geraniums were planted in those red brick flowerbeds ever again. Unless you think plastic is alive.
*
Elise’s cooking was like the Mallee. It, too, was uncompromising. It, too, delicately balanced beauty and ugliness, lurching from nasty gelatinous porridge, clinging stubbornly to the wooden spoon, to fairytale pink and blue and green French meringues that almost floated in the air and which Marjorie scoffed. From lamb flaps, boiled and drowned in their own congealed fat, to a succulent and tender roast lamb with crispy roast vegetables and gravy that made Marjorie’s mouth water.
Pa was suspicious of Elise’s cooking. ‘What’s this?’ he would ask as he sniffed at the meringues. ‘Call that a chop?’ he would growl at the offering on his plate. Bill and Ruby and Marjorie didn’t care. The bad cooking they endured. The magical cooking they admired.
But Bill had been away too long. Cooking in a Mallee kitchen was serious women’s business. He should never have forgotten that. And cooking in the Mallee was sensible and predictable. It had boundaries and substance and the firm foundation of The Country Women’s Association Cookbook to keep you on the right track. Unlike the Mallee, cooking could never be extreme or eccentric. If Bill had remembered, he might have had the sense to warn her.
Elise battled the wood stove. She had no choice; there was no chance of a city girl’s newfangled gas cooker or electric cooktop coming over the sandhills to save her. There was just wood. Bill helped at first. He collected the kindling and chopped the Mallee roots into small, stove-sized nuggets. He showed Elise how to light the stove. And then, with autumn, came the shearing season, Elise’s first test. She had to confront hardened shearers – navy-singleted and sweating men who could denude a sheep before you had time to take the lid off the billy. Shearers who had sweated and denuded right across Australia.
‘What are you doing for their dinner?’ asked Pa. ‘And what’s organised for smokos?’
Elise looked at Bill in alarm. She hadn’t organised anything. Shearing was men’s business. ‘What do I know about smokes? I expect the men to get their own smokes. And they are sleeping in the shearers’ quarters. They can get their own dinner,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Bill, quieting the panic. ‘You just need to make sandwiches and some cakes for smoko – morning and afternoon tea. And some cups of tea.’ He grabbed the distressed hands rushing to cover her mouth.
Elise had to make tomato sandwiches on white high-tin bread with pepper and salt, and boiled fruitcake, and scones with butter and jam, and biscuits and slices. And a billy of scalding black tea with optional sugar, and optional milk for the sissies (of which there were none among the shearers’ ranks).
The shearers sat outside the shearing shed, lined up in the shade of the corrugated-iron wall. It was the first day and it was time for smoko. The shearing plant was quiet. It had sighed and slowed at the yank of the shed hand on the leather pulley line above his head. The shearers had kicked the last of their naked sheep through the wooden trapdoor to join their already stripped comrades, then stretched and swayed to ease their tired backs. The last of the morning fleeces was thrown on the sorting bench. Relief and expectation danced in the air with the bits of flying fleece. Wafts of engine steam and engine oil wandered out into the welcome break and sat with the hazy lanolin smell. Smoko was a good time.
Elise did alright on the sandwiches and the tea, but the rest were a failure by anyone’s standards.
‘What are these things? Biscuits?’ asked mystified shearers sniffing at Elise’s scones.
‘I think these are probably the scones, fruit scones,’ said others as they poked the boiled fruitcake. ‘Never seen those things before, though,’ they added, shaking their heads and squinting their eyes at the pink and green and blue French meringues.
The biggest mistake, however, was placing the sandwiches and the other failures on her beautiful plates. The shearers were fretting now. They smoked their smokes and picked bits of tobacco from their bottom lips as they contemplated the inadequate morning tea. Talk was low and troubled. The idling shearing plant popped quietly in the background, made queasy by the unsatisfactory offerings. It was a hit-and-miss engine, and there certainly was a lot of hit-and-miss about this smoko. The ragged gum trees – overseers of countless sensible shearings and satisfactory smokos across the years – stirred. They dragged and scraped their dusty leaves across the tin roof of the shearing shed, splattering tiny gum nuts into the billy and onto the red dirt below as they surveyed the smoko. The sheep waiting in the yards outside bumped and sidled against each other, pushing their large woolly sides against the rough Mallee-pine rails, heads to the side, their horizontal pupils eyeing the foolish food in sheepish dismay.
Shearers mobilise quickly and effectively. They have a long and proud union tradition and they take this with them as they traverse the sheds across Australia. When smoking was finished and talking concluded, the appointed shed representative approached Bill. ‘We can’t have this, boss,’ he said, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder in the general direction of the offending food. ‘The missus will have to give us proper scones next time. We don’t mind if we don’t get the nice biscuits and things every time, but we have to have scones. And we have to have fruitcake – not that fruit biscuit thing.’ The shed representative frowned. ‘And what the hell are those plates doing here?’ he asked. ‘Ya know everything has to be wrapped in that lunch paper the womenfolk use. How’s it all going to stay fresh on those?’
Both faces turned to gaze on the silliness of plates and the deficient morning tea.
‘And, boss,’ continued the shed representative as Pa came over, ‘what the hell are those pink and green lolly things? We’re shearers, not pansies. We can’t be having them again.’
The other shearers nodded and spat in the dust while they cleaned their shearing combs, to show collective support for their representative.
‘Serves yourself right,’ said Pa to Bill. ‘What the bloody hell do you think that city girl is giving them there? You can’t be giving shearers that arty-farty muck to eat. And what are those silly bloody plates doing there?’
‘It won’t happen again,’ Bill promised. ‘I’ll make sure you all get a proper feed from now on.’
The shearers were decent blokes. They had known ahead of time – from conversations and information hitching shearing sheds together across the nation – that Bill had come back to the farm and had brought a city girl back with him, and what did a city girl know about cooking up a decent feed? But she could learn. She deserved a go. So they shrugged and nodded and went back to the job of shearing, giving Elise another chance.
Magnificent scones and butter and jam appeared for afternoon tea. And a credible boiled fruitcake as well. It was a suitable feed and the shearing was uneventful from then on. Bill had taken on the job of making the scones and the boiled fruitcakes hi
mself. Pa watched on, shaking his head in disgust.
*
Mallee life was like a hessian bag – sturdy and no-nonsense. It was hard-wearing. You could cement hessian bags if you wanted to. You could make a hut out of them. Plates did the same job as hessian bags in the Mallee. Life was cemented solid by sensible plates. Sometimes it was the grand finals – footy or tennis or cricket. Or the local dances, or the school break-up. Other times it was a wedding, or a funeral. Whatever it was, the ladies would bring a plate.
So Elise brought a plate to the annual dance at the end of the shearing. This was shortly after Marjorie started school, when they had been there for just over a year. Elise had brought a plate on various occasions over the previous year, though since the shearing she had stuck to sandwiches. This time was different, though. Elise turned up in her city clothes and styled her hair with Permanent Setting Lotion. She put on lipstick and high heels and pearls. Dressed to the nines, some of the women whispered. Does she think the Queen’s coming or something? And on her plate were the wondrous, coloured, floating French meringues.
It was at this particular dance that Marjorie saw she wasn’t the only one who loved her mother’s meringues; Jimmy Waghorn did too. They always took Jimmy to the dances if he wanted to go. Jimmy was Bill’s old childhood mate. He had lived in the area his whole life. If you asked him, he would tell you he was born under one of the gum trees down near the dried-up creek, but no one really believed him, because he also said the creek used to have water in it and nobody had ever seen that. Now, though, he lived in the old hut in the paddock next to the house paddock.
‘These are alright, they are, whatever you call them,’ he said to Marjorie as he crammed them in – his face now a French meringue testament with its bold, continental sprinkling of pink and green and blue. But he would say that. He would cram them in. Because he was kind. And he never seemed to care what anyone else thought. Marjorie had always liked Jimmy. She knew that Jimmy Waghorn was someone to stick close to – just like Ruby. But that night, long before she understood how right she would turn out to be about this, Marjorie knew that she loved Jimmy. She loved his brown face with its foreign pastel dustings. She loved him staring around at everyone, nodding and genial. She loved him cramming them in.
And Jesse Mitchell, that messy, skinny boy from one of the neighbouring farms who had started school with her. He was shoving them in too. Marjorie’s mouth dropped open. What would that Jesse care about French meringues? He always seemed to be too busy hunching around the schoolyard and scowling at her and everyone else to know anything about anything. She watched him delicately placing seconds in his pockets. Marjorie wasn’t surprised at that; Jesse always seemed to be hungry and looking to pinch food.
He turned to those two dusty little brothers of his who were never too far from creeping behind. ‘Here,’ she heard him say. ‘Have one of these, you two. They’re magic. They’re from France. That’s on the other side of the world.’ And Marjorie watched those little boys as their mouths exploded with coloured meringue, and their eyes lit up and they crowded in against that big brother of theirs.
She watched him take some to his mother, whose shoulders seemed too snowed under ever to manage to hold her head up, her hands lying sad in her lap. ‘Try this, Mum,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’ll like this.’
But he didn’t take any to his father. Everybody hereabouts knew his father would have been too busy with his amber fluid to bother about food. And everybody hereabouts knew better than to interfere with Jesse’s father when a barrel had been tapped. He would have been approaching full by now, standing outside at the barrel, staring over the top of his glass with its familiar, comforting mantle of froth. And anyway, he was all skin and sinew and bunched arms and jumpy legs, with shoulders that were always ready for action and eyes that never tired of watching. He seemed to have too much energy for one body already, so he probably didn’t need any food.
Bill ate a couple. ‘Now that’s mighty fine tucker, Elise,’ he said with a nod and a wink – even though those egg white French things did not really go with beer.
Pa headed for the lamingtons.
There were not too many others at that dance who touched Elise’s French meringues, though, so they stood alone and fabulous among the scones, tomato sandwiches, jam slices and lamingtons, the fruitcakes, ginger fluffs and cream sponges. People were curious, but they skirted around them. These foreign concoctions were not to be found anywhere in The Country Women’s Association Cookbook, not even in the most recent edition, so with the exception of Jimmy and Jesse they were not scoffed or crammed, not how the rest of the supper was scoffed.
‘Here’s your plate, Elise,’ said Shirlene Doherty after the women had finished the cleaning up. ‘My plate’s empty but there are still quite a few left on yours.’
‘You may take them home if you like,’ said Elise.
‘No thanks,’ said Shirlene. ‘My menfolk couldn’t eat that. They need real food.’ Shirlene studied the meringues, trying to pinpoint just where they failed. Perhaps because they were French? And what would the French know about good food or proper farming . . .
‘I’ll have one,’ said Aunty Kathleen, Bill’s sister who had years before married a local farmer out the other side of the town. Aunty Kathleen had been keeping an eye on Elise from the backwaters of the supper eating – giving her city sister-in-law an honourable amount of time to do the right thing and stand up to Shirlene. But Aunty Kathleen had seen that Elise had been stumped as far as standing up for yourself goes. ‘Thanks, Shirlene,’ Aunty Kathleen said as she snatched a meringue from Shirlene – a courageous act of kindness.
‘Me too,’ said Aunty Thelma, Bill’s other farmer-married sister snatching and grabbing and cramming – just like Jimmy Waghorn and Jesse Mitchell.
You might wonder why Elise didn’t stick to sandwiches. Why did she, after all this time and all those sensible sandwiches, turn her aproned back on the sage judgement those shearers had declared about meringues?
‘You’re not doing sandwiches then?’ asked an alarmed Bill when he saw the tiny fluffs of coloured egg white.
‘I am sick and tired of sandwiches,’ said Elise.
‘Why don’t you try a boiled fruitcake then?’ asked Bill.
‘No,’ snapped Elise. ‘I am making meringues.’
Bill saw the strange light in the eyes so he said no more.
Despite the alien subtlety of the meringues, though, Marjorie knew it was less the plates and more the drink that was at fault. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Mrs Cameron asked after the rebuff of the meringues at the dance. She knew a cup of tea could solve a lot of problems.
‘No, thank you. That is very kind of you, Mrs Cameron, but I prefer coffee,’ said Elise.
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Cameron. And all the ladies in the supper room looked up from their cups of tea with milk and sugar and examined her once more, looking for a clue as to why any proper Mallee farmer’s wife would refuse a cup of tea. For coffee.
Later on, the coffee drinking would be a relief to these women struggling to comprehend. It would provide a means of understanding why Elise was failing. ‘Poor Elise,’ they would say, shaking their heads as they washed up. ‘It was never going to work out. Not when she could never have a cup of tea.’
‘No,’ they would agree. ‘It isn’t good, you know, drinking all that coffee. Not with those nerves of hers. And has anyone seen that concoction of a thing on her stove that she brews it in?’
The concoction they referred to was a wonderful aluminium stovetop coffee percolator with a glass lid brought by Elise from the city. At first Elise would offer her guests a choice: a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. But she didn’t do that for long.
‘Humph,’ sniffed Shirlene Doherty in response. Afterwards, she said, ‘She’ll kill herself with that thing one day.’
‘It’s not poison,’ Mrs Cameron point
ed out.
‘Humph,’ said Shirlene. She was treating coffee warily. It was not normal. No one else in the Mallee drank coffee.
So the coffee percolator sat on the stove and bubbled and popped and percolated for Elise alone. It didn’t mind, though; it was devoted to Elise. So, it bubbled steadfastly on the stove through the Mallee summers and winters. And it witnessed the dwindling visitors to Elise’s kitchen.
‘Keep that flamin’ contraption away from my tea,’ warned Pa, but Marjorie loved that coffee percolator. She dreamt of the day when Elise would give her a cup of coffee. ‘Can I have a cup of coffee?’
‘Of course you can, Marjorie. You are certainly able to have a cup of coffee. But the question you should ask is: May I have a cup of coffee? Mind your grammar. You are not a street urchin. And no, you may not have a cup of coffee. You are too young.’
‘But I am older.’
‘Not old enough.’
Until that time might arrive, Marjorie took comfort from the coffee percolator’s otherworldly shape, its soft, wet burbling. She stared as the bubbles popped into the glass top – brown and curious – and down again out of sight. It was a thing of comfort and magic. It was a thing that made Elise happy.
But no amount of percolation could make Elise happy forever. Marjorie realised that over time. Because the coffeepot was not sensible like a teapot. It was kindly but foolish. It aided and abetted Elise and insisted on providing hot coffee percolations right through any blasting summer when only a cup of tea or a drink of water would really do the trick. If it wasn’t for the coffee percolator, Elise might have worked out how to properly bring a plate, especially in the hot weather. As it turned out, though, Elise refused to compromise, regardless of the season. It might have been different if she had not been so stubborn. She might have been happy if the coffee percolator had stayed out of things. Because summer was the season when heat and dust and flies ran amok in the Mallee. Where sunburn and sunstroke flourished. It was the time for dust storms, empty rainwater tanks, sheep trapped and dying in the shrinking, stinking mud of the dams. But it was also the season for harvest.
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